Thursday, January 22, 2015

Headline: Downey
Plays Prodigal Son in Search of Redemption in Compelling Courtroom Drama

Hank Palmer
(Robert Downey, Jr.) is a very successful, criminal defense attorney with a
good reason to hide his humble roots. After all, he was a rebellious kid who
frequently landed in trouble with the law while growing up in tiny Carlinville, Indiana.

That juvenile delinquency
only served to alienate him from his father, Joseph (Robert Duvall), who just
happened to be the town’s only judge. In addition, one of Hank’s more egregious
missteps left him permanently estranged from his older brother, Glen (Vincent
D’Onofrio). And since their only other sibling, Dale (Jeremy Palmer), was
mentally handicapped, Hank hadn’t been back in ages when he received word that
his mother (Catherine Cummings) had died.

So, he only planned to make
a perfunctory appearance at the funeral before quickly returning to Chicago where he had his
hands full, between his high-flying career and a custody battle with his
estranged wife (Sarah Lancaster) over their young daughter (Emma Tremblay).
However, everything changes when Judge Palmer is suddenly arrested in the
hit-and-run killing of a creepy convict (Mark Kiely) he’d publicly castigated
in court before releasing back onto the street.

This shocking development
conveniently forces Hank to stick around to represent his father, and
simultaneously affords him the opportunity to mend a few fences. Plus, it gives
him time to unwittingly seduce a woman he meets in a bar (Leighton Meester),
who is not only the daughter of his high school sweetheart (Vera Farmiga),
but might be the love child he never knew he had.

Thus
unfolds The Judge, a character-driven drama which is half-whodunit,
half-kitchen sink soap opera that pulls another rabbit out of the hat every
five minutes or so. A potentially farcical film remains rather well grounded
thanks to Robert Duvall who plays the Palmer family patriarch with a sobering,
stone cold gravitas.

Both Robert
Downey, Jr. and Billy Bob Thornton turn in inspired performances, too, as
the opposing attorneys matching wits in a classic courtroom showdown. And the
rest of the ensemble more than holds their own as well in service of a script
that has a tendency to strain credulity.

A fanciful, thoroughly-modern variation
on the parable of the Prodigal Son!

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The Sly Fox Film Reviews publishes the content of film critic Kam Williams. Voted Most Outstanding Journalist of the Decade by the Disilgold Soul Literary Review in 2008, Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who writes for 100+ publications around the U.S., Europe, Asia, Africa, Canada and the Caribbean. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Online, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee and Rotten Tomatoes.

In addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.